'Great' minds think alike :)

Earlier, I had written a post on the similarities between technology and art and how the two stem from the same core of human spirit. While browsing on some topic, I came across this article by Paul Graham which talks about the same thing.

As they say, 'Great' minds think alike! ;)

Comments invited as usual.

World domination, Google style

A lot has been said and written about Microsoft's attempt at world domination by proliferating its software on computers. Even more has been written about its attempt at reducing competition to dust by giving away software for free (Internet Explorer, for instance.) What has gone unnoticed, in the meanwhile, is Google's wonderfully silent attempt at the same.

For the uninitiated, Google has just released Spreadsheets - an Internet-based spreadsheet application ( or applet?) that will be available for free use. Ofcourse, by default, the files you create will be stored in your Google account, hosted on what else? Google servers. So not only does Google get you to abandon Excel, but it'll also hold you to ransom - your income tax returns for instance, will be available to Google's administrators if they were interested.

Wonder why no one is raising a hue and cry about killing competition by offering software for free. Wonder why no one is raising a privacy issue about having your files stored on their servers.

Anyways, folks, this is world domination Google style. The only difference is that you don't have to pay for it.

Shashi Tharoor

I had mostly ignored Shashi Tharoor's nomination as India's candidate for the UNSG's post until my friend Prad and his friend, G3, blogged about it.

I think this is one of the most stupid foreign policy decisions that the Manmoron government has made. Why? A MBA-friend once explained about the risk-reward concept by saying that some risks are acceptable provided the rewards are proportionally higher. What is the reward India gets if Tharoor gets the post? One word: Nothing. He is not going to support India on any issue of consequence, he doesn't have a vote that can make a difference to India, nor can does he have executive powers - for example, to tell Pakistan to buzz off from Kashmir. In fact, why has no big country ever held the post? Because unlike what we are told in our f'ked up Civics books, the UNSG is nothing like a World President. He is more like a World Puppet - a very well paid one at that. Shashi Tharoor has obvious interests in becoming the UNSG. India gains nothing by proposing him to the post.

What are the risks? Well, first off, we'll now be counted as a country on par with Thailand, Sri Lanka and Pakistan - that have all made nominations for the post. And if God forbid, India were to lose (which isn't all that improbable), it'll be a huge slap on our face. Not to mention the fact that we can write off Sri Lanka's and Thailand's support for an UNSC seat - if that were ever to be put to vote. Or the fact that we just ruined a relationship with Sri Lanka by announcing Tharoor's nomination just when the Sri Lankan foreign minister was in India asking our support for his candidate.

So, this is just some sort of personal give-and-take between the lefties, the soft-lefties and the Manmoron government. There is nothing India will gain from the move. In fact, this might be the first nail in the coffin of our UNSC hopes.

Congrats, moron!

More shayaari

Many of you would have heard the hit song from (I think) Mohabbattein:
"Aankhen khuli ho ya ho band
deedar unka hota hai
kaise kahoon mein oh yaara yeh
pyar kaise hota hai"

Back in NCSU, I was working on our SCTP project with a couple of friends, and to our surprise, our test server was receiving the SACK*s from the test client without the protocol (which was the intermediary) being notified - infact, the SCTP socket wasn't even open! In a moment of inspiration we came up with this song:

"Socket khuli ho yaa ho band
data transmission hota hai
kaise kahoon mein oh yaara yeh
SACK kaise aata hai"

*(SACK = Selective acknowledgement - a packet sent by the receiver to the sender acknowledging the receipt of a set of packets)

Khud ko itna...

"Khud ko itna buland kar ki har takdeer se pehle, khuda bande se pooche 'bata, teri raza kya hai?' " - one of my all-time favourite shers. For those who don't get Hindi quite that well, it means: "Raise yourself to such heights that even the Lord, before deciding on your fate will ask you for what you want."

When I was in my previous company in India, the Kargil war was on, and in one of the Indo-Pak rivalry chatrooms, we used a modified version of this sher:

"Khud ko itna buland kar ki Kargil ke choti pe jaa pahunche aur khuda tumse pooche 'abe gadhe, ab utrega kaise?' " - which, for the shaayarically challenged means: "Raise yourself to such heights that you find yourself on the tops of the Kargil mountains and the Lord asks you 'you idiot, how will you get down!?' "

If you folks know who authored the original, please let me know.

All ye Indophiles

I may have mentioned this before, but there is this website: http://goodnewsindia.com/index.php/gni
which no Indophile should miss. The work of one D V Sridharan (not to be confused with Metro's E Sreedharan), the site consists of true stories from India - stories of sung and unsung heroes (note that I use the term 'hero' without reference to gender). The site has hours and hours of pro-India stories for those that are interested.

If you are ever going to Amazon to purchase a book, please go from the links provided on this site.

Heroes

I was watching a "Hollywood Top Ten" show on Z Cafe today, when there was a reference to a movie about Jane Goodall. For those who came in late, Jane Goodall is the woman who single-handedly demolished our misconceptions about that relative of ours - the Gorilla. She showed, for example, that Gorillas do use tools - something we thought was exclusively human, leading to the modification of the definition of the human from 'tool-user' to 'tool-maker'.

Read more about her here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall

Crediting Jane Goodall is not only why I wrote this post. I wrote this to highlight the difference between two classes of societies - one that respects and truly worships its heroes and the other that pretends to. With due apologies to my friend, 'Anonymous', who incidentally accuses me of being 90% American, we know which the two classes of societies are.

Look at the movies Hollywood has made about American heroes. And I am not referring to war heroes, politicians, or sportsmen. I am talking about your 'everyday' mathematician, scientist, or writer. Many examples abound: "A beautiful mind" talked about the achievements of Dr. John Nash, whose Nash equilibrium is said to be one of the building blocks of Operations Research, "Apollo 13" commemorated the bravery of the Apollo 13 astronauts who against great odds managed to finish their intended mission, why even our own Gandhi was first celebrated by Richard Attenborough in what is the classiest movie made about him. Not to mention all the unsung fire-fighters, policemen and other day-to-day heroes who have been celebrated in so many movies.

So the question arises, why don't we have the same in Bollywood? Is it because such movies don't sell? Or is it because as a society we don't really know how to honour our heroes? Is it because we don't like heroes except those imposed upon us - like the cricketers, film stars or politicos? Or, is it because, as a society and a culture, we don't have a sense of history? Why?

I don't know. But I do know that a society that forgets its history is condemned to repeat it.

Writer's block

Suffering from writer's block lately. There seem to be too many things that are happening, but I don't feel enthused by anything to write about it.

Need to get out of this phase soon.

A posting century.

Folks,

You guessed it right. This is my 100th post. At first, I thought I'll follow my favourite TV personality and have a "Best of Gopal's blog" for my 100th post, but I realized that I wasn't *that* self-involved.

So. Here is to further blogging. Thanks to my regular readers for keeping my motivation levels high enough to hit this 'landmark'.

Accepting congratulations... :)

So, what is Freedom?

Well, according to Paulo Coelho, as written in the book "The Zahir", Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit oneself to - what is best for him/her.

Couldn't agree more. Thanks 'Anonymous' for the correction. :)

Nice guys...

Rahul Dravid is a wuss. I hate to say this, but this unfortunately is a fact. For all his faults, Ganguly knew how to deal with people. Dravid unfortunately, is obsessed with being nice. So much so that he negotiated away with Lara and the match-referee, a wonderful opportunity for India to put Lara out of the series. And to top it off, Sehwag gets fined for 'excessive appealing'!!! Can you believe it!!?

I've always believed that nice guys finish last. No where is it better illustrated in the recent test between India and the West Indies. Lara was way out of line in demanding that Dhoni walk. Dravid should have asked him to shut up first. He thought it was better to declare, rather than waste time, so as a strategy, it is probably OK. What was the need to go to the match-referee and exonerate Lara? Let Lara be dunked a couple of matches - India would have been in a better position to win then. But no, we have to be the nice guys (read fall guys)!

To add injury to insult, Sehwag was fined for excessive appealing. Nice going, Rahul!?

The Fanaa controversy

I am no fan of Aamir Khan (I do like many of his movies, though), and I thought that his intervention in the NBA agitation was rather poorly scripted. Still, I can't help but condemn the BJP government's attitude towards Fanaa. Whatever Aamir Khan said was well within his rights as a citizen. And if someone had a problem with it, he has every right to: a) boycott Aamir Khan movies (b) promote his point-of-view non-violently, and (c) go to court. No one though, has the right to enforce a ban on the movie. No one has the right to prevent its screening, and for gods' sake, no one has the right to threaten theatres against screening the movie.

But what we saw was the occurrence of all three. And there are in fact people who went on national television calling Aamir names - "enemy of Gujarat", for example.

I was discussing this issue with a friend - someone I respect greatly - and his point was that Aamir should have exercised restraint in whatever he did or said. And that what was happening was essentially his (Aamir's) fault.

In my opinion, it is this attitude that has allowed governments, hooligans (read Rajkumar 'fans'), and plain sickos (read VHP/Bajrang Dal/Muslim Personal Law Board/Christian 'activists') to get away with denying us one of the most fundamental human right - the right to speech and expression.

What is your take?

The Nanny State, Police brutality, and other issues

Did you have a nanny when you were young? I had one - infact, my school had one, and she used to walk a bunch of us home from school on some days. Simply put, she was a terror. She dragged us as she wanted, cursed us when we fell back, hit some of us on occasions, and was simply using us to vent her frustrations. Ofcourse, she would be on her best behaviour when any of the parents were around: her true self revealed only when they left.

Why am I talking about this? Well, the recent reservation debates have demonstrated the 'nanny' nature of the Indian state. First, you have a hidden agenda, that comes out only in the last minute. Then, you have the mandatory round of police brutality - non-violent protesters being beaten mercilessly. Finally, you have the denials - the Commisoner of Mumbai Police denying that there was any lathi-charge at all. In fact, Star News did something real cool for once. They broadcast his denial and shots of people being beaten up on a split screen simultaneously. Still, the shameless state did nothing.

Consider this - the brightest, young minds of the country are protesting against an injustice. How does the government treat them? No one listens to them at first, then, the police beat them up, and even after that, no minister had the courtesy to apologize or at least visit the injured students. Contrast this with the treatment given to VIP protesters like Vandana Shiva, Arun'dirty' Roy and Medha Patkar. These worthies are feted, cajoled, and even the tall and mighty Indian state falls at their feet.

I could go on and on about why this is so - but I'll defer it to an other post.

Joke

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Came across this in the book "Eats, shoots and leaves" by Lynne Truss.

Drinking and Alcoholism

Yesterday, NDTV carried a debate about youngsters coming under the influence of alcohol on its "Big Fight" programme. The participants were Vijay Mallya of UB, Jaya Jaitley of the Samata Party and some other 'social activist'.

Needless to say, Vijay Mallya was pilloried by everyone, including the audience, the other debators and the compere. And to add to it, my Mom. Somehow the words "alcohol" raises the temperature of any room it is uttered in, particularly when women are around. Some assumptions are immediately made:

• Only men drink
• Only men drink irresponsibly
• Men drink and they come back and beat their wives/mothers/sisters/daughters
• One drink is enough to convert a man from a normal human being into a raving psychopath/rapist/criminal.
• Anyone who drinks once instantly becomes a slave to the drink and can't live without it
• Every man who drinks is depriving his family of essentials to pay for his habit
• And importantly, any one who tries to introduce some sanity into the debate (poor souls like me) are either drunkards themselves, or they want to become one.

The best part is that all these comments come from those who have *never* had the misfortune of actually consuming alcohol. And you know where they get these ideas from? Depending on your preference, B(T)(K)ollywood. Every villian, particularly in the old Hindi movies would conduct his 'business' over a peg of whiskey. Every vamp would tempt the unsuspecting hero by giving him alcohol. Every heroine or hero's sister would be led astray by first filling her up with alcohol. And mind you, everytime, after one peg, there is no stopping these victims! After one peg of whiskey, the normally sedate hero would starting uttering gibberish, attempt to molest the heroine, drive like a man possessed, and simply make a fool of himself, until the heroine or the mother intervened with a bucket of ice-cold water after which he immediately returns to sanity. Geez!

I know I am going to get spammed like hell, particularly if some people read this. But seriously, grow up, folks!

C++ and Movie dialogues

I am one who believes that there is a single thread running through all facets of life - be it music, art, movies, sports, or technology. See my "Technology and Art" post for a hashed attempt at explaining its logic.

Recently, I got an opportunity to talk about C++ to a few colleagues at the place I work (yeah, yet again!), and then a few movie/comicbook dialogues popped up in my mind as I was explaining C++ concepts. Thought it'll be interesting to share them with you.

On the fact that while C++ gives you near total control on how your clients can create and use your objects, you have to take care of many details to make it work properly:
"With great power comes great responsibility" [Original: Dave Parker, Spiderman's uncle.]

On the fact that even when an exception is thrown (not to the runtime), objects that have been created will be destroyed:
"Everything that has a beginning has an end." [Original: Matrix I]

I'll update this post as I find more. And no, I am *not* offering this as proof of my theory about the single thread running through all facets of life. That proof will take some time to materialize.

Sitcom stuff.

As some of you already know, my favourite tele-series of all time is Frasier. With the series being re-telecast on Star World now, I am getting an opportunity to re-live some of the fun times I had watching this series (and a few others) when I was in NCSU.

Here are some dialogues I kind of remember from the series:

Roz telling Frasier after yet another unsuccessful date: "You are sweet, you're smart, you're nice - you are exactly what women should be looking for".
Frasier (with a sad voice): "Yeah, I am the Brocolli of dating!"

Another one:
This is the first episode, and Martin has just moved into Frasier's apartment. Frasier asks his opinion of how he has setup his living room and Martin cribs "But nothing matches".
Frasier: "Yes Dad. It is _eclectic_"
Now two workers come in carrying Martin's chair. The look on Frasier's face is one of sheer horror. He doesn't want that chair in his living room at _any_ cost.
Frasier: "Dad, but that...that chair doesn't go with anything in the room!"
Martin (with dripping sarcasm): "I know! It is _eclectic_".

Here is another one:
Daphne has become real fat after she and Niles start dating - but no one wants to point it out to her. One day however, she slips and falls. Niles first rushes to lift her up, but he can't. Martin joins in, and they still can't move her. Finally, Frasier arrives and the three lift her up. So, here's what Martin says:
"Daphne, I just thought of somethin' funny: It took three Cranes to lift you!?" [Frasier/Martin/Niles's surname is Crane]

There are so many more...too bad I can't remember all of them! :(

Anyway, here is one from Friends:
Monica and Chandler are dating and they think no one knows. But Rachel and Phoebe know, and Monica and Chandler know that Rachel and Phoebe know. Phoebe and Rachel are coming up with a plan to oust them (Monica and Chandler) and here is what Phoebe says:
"But they don't know that we know that they know we know!"

If you haven't had an opportunity to watch Frasier - do watch it now. Considering the kind of junk that passes for comedy these days (what with Paapa Pandu and the like), you'll definitely find this series refreshing.

How do I feel, driving my new car in town?

Well, too many people have asked this question, so I thought I'll put the answer down on my blog.

You guys know the 'Friends' title song? Well, for the uninitiated, here it is:

"So no one told you life was gonna be this way
[Your job's a joke,
you're broke,
your love life's D.O.A. ]
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year " ...

Well, the part of the song enclosed in [] was true of my life for a long time, and now with the car, the next line has come true as well!!!

But anyway, on a serious note, driving in Bangalore isn't as bad as it seems. There are still roads on which you can reach 4th gear. Seriously! :)

More role modeling

Seeing the enthusiastic response I got to my first blog on role models, I think I should write more about the subject. I now realize that 'role model' might have been a very strong term, so I'll qualify it as 'influencer' meaning a person or persons who influenced me a great deal.

Obviously, after my parents, my brother has been a big influence on me. He was my first maths and science tutor, my first cricket coach, my first 'how to tackle bullies' instructor, and being fourteen years older than me was my guru for practically everything (except maybe languages, social studies and music). He introduced me to the world of English literature, (read novels) and Old Hindi film music. He gave me my initial goals in life - first to be a participant in many activities, then to enter SJIHS, and then to prepare for the IITs. Ofcourse, not all of those goals materialized and for that no one is to blame but me. The biggest lesson I learnt from him though is that raw talent is nothing without the effort to back it up. That has been the most important lesson in life. Just a pity that I learnt it very late.

The next person I want to credit is my sister-in-law. For a single 1/2 hour session where she taught me the intricacies of C pointers. That lesson is with me even today - and was the single thing that helped me learn pointers - her lesson helped me more than many reads of Kanetkar's "Pointers in C", giving me such a strong basis in pointers that I lost all fear of it :)

Whew! Looks like I wrote quite a bit. And the smell of my mom's cooking is wafting through the air, restricting my vocabulary to food-related words. So, I'll stop here. Do cook up (oops! send in) your comments.

I'll write about my other role models (influences) in the next posts. _That_ should be interesting...

Goodbye, Mr. Mahajan.

In the death of Pramod Mahajan, not just the BJP, but the entire country has lost an accomplished politician and administrator. Mahajan, who came from a village in Maharashtra, typefied why many people of my generation were attracted to the BJP. He was suave, sophisticated, was a great communicator, and unlike the other politicians did not hide his good fortune.

Another young, able son of India stolen away in 'youth'.

May his soul rest in peace. Am unable to say anything else.